Video and Your Product Launch

Is your business planning a product or company launch? Make sure to incorporate a promotional video in the mix of marketing materials you’re developing. With YouTube now one of the top three most visited sites on the internet, there’s no doubt that people want to consume content via video. Here are things to consider before you begin creating a launch video.

Determine what the purpose of the video is. Is it to generate buzz and interest, as Audi recently did with its R8 GT teaser video series? Is it to showcase the product’s benefits, along the lines of TaylorMade’s Spider Golf Club video?

Or maybe you have another goal in mind?

Decide whether you’re going to use live action, animation, graphics, slides, or a combination thereof. Whatever direction you take, make sure that you develop for the medium of video. Resist repurposing marketing or sales tools “as is.”

For example, don’t take a power point presentation that’s cluttered with text in small typeface, record a delivery of it and post it online as so many companies do. People can’t read what’s on the screen and they will abort watching it ASAP.

Along those lines, consider the multiple monitor display sizes that your video may be viewed on. It could be watched on a screen as small as a smartphone, or on one as large as a 52 inch flat screen TV. Your video must be suitable for any screen size so that your audience remains engaged long enough to consume your key messages.

There’s also the matter of whether you want to convert your video to Flash or HTML5 to post on your website and elsewhere so that people can watch it via their browsers. That’s only an issue if you don’t want to rely solely on video sharing platforms, such as YouTube or Vimeo, as the viewing platforms. There are many factors to consider when making this decision and this fine article by Periscopic will help you think it through.

When it comes to cost, companies no longer need to allocate a large portion of their launch budgets to video production unless they want to produce a high end quality film. If that’s the objective, then hiring a professional film crew, actors and a video editing team makes sense.

There are now low cost video creation and editing tools available for firms that prefer to take an economical approach. Stupeflix and One True Media let users mix pictures, videos, text and music to create videos. If animation is the preferred direction, take a look at GoAnimate and iClone3D.

Do you want to create a tutorial or demo video of a software program? Then give CamStudio a try. It’s a free open source video solution that enables screen recording and audio/video sync.

Whatever tools you decide to use, when launch day arrives, post the completed video on your company’s website, its Facebook page, if the business has one, and on YouTube. After all, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.